This post has been modified to reflect new information since its original publication.
Whether you’re a doctor trying to protect your practice from negative reviews, a parent trying to keep your children safe online, or a job hunter trying to make a good impression with hiring managers, protecting your online reputation is essential.
For many, this means turning to an expert consultant for online reputation management (ORM) services.
However, not all ORM firms are created equal. As the need for ORM services has increased, so has the number of unethical companies that are more interested in emptying their clients’ pockets than they are in helping them.
Read on to learn more about ORM companies, including:
- Why you might need one.
- What they do.
- Some of the important things to look for when choosing one.
- How to avoid services that don’t work.
Why would I need an ORM company?
Unfortunately, there are many ways people can trash your reputation online:
- Former business partners
- Ex-lovers
- Estranged family members
- Disgruntled employees
And even total strangers can create reputation problems for you and your business in a myriad of ways.
They could post slander about you on well-known sites, defame you in a Facebook comment, even run an entire smear campaign to sully your good name or rally people who are unfamiliar with your situation to shame and harass you in the mistaken belief that you’re somehow the bad guy.
As such, having an ORM company protecting you is a necessary part of doing business on the internet.
Compounding the problem is the fact that our past mistakes never go away online.
Many of us do foolish things when we are young. Unfortunately, the internet has a way of bringing those past mistakes back for everyone to see—often when it’s most inconvenient, like when you’re applying to college or trying to get a job.
If you run a business, sometimes you encounter a problem that you just can’t shake, although you’ve taken steps to do so.
Even the biggest and most well-managed companies will make a mistake at some point; just ask Coca-Cola’s marketing team how sick they are of hearing jokes about New Coke.
Adidas is still getting mentioned regarding their insensitive Boston Marathon email.
An ORM company can help fix marketing missteps and public relations problems that often take far, far longer to go away on their own.
What do ORM companies do?
ORM companies help you assess, build, and monitor your online reputation. They help you proactively and in some cases, they will also help you repair your online reputation if it’s been damaged.
Generally, reputation protection starts with search engine optimization, or SEO.
Most people, if they’ve heard of SEO, think of it as a way of “controlling” your search results, but, in truth, the process is much more complex than that.
There are about two hundred factors that search engines consider when deciding where to rank content on their result pages. ORM firms know how to leverage these factors to help when it’s time to shuffle up bad online results. And that’s good for you because the top three search results for a term garner “more than two-thirds (68.7%) of all clicks on the Google Search page.”
However, search engines are sensitive to any attempts to “game” their results. This is why you need a pro that knows how to manage your online reputation by controlling what shows up in the search results for your name or the name of your company.
But let’s be clear.
ORM companies don’t try to trick search engines. Instead, they carefully monitor how search rankings change over time to see what factors can raise or lower certain results in the search engine rankings. Then, they carefully apply these lessons to the content they develop for their clients. The main aim here is to ensure this preferred content appears at (or near) the top of the results page.
Each ORM company uses a different strategy and different methods to bolster content online. However, they all have the same goal—to, over time, push up positive and relevant content about you while pushing down or even deleting negative content about you from the internet entirely.
What qualities should I look for in an ORM company?
There are many different factors that should go into choosing the company that’s right for you.
Overall, these are the first two questions you should consider:
- Has the company that you’re considering been verified by a third party like the Better Business Bureau?
- Is its leadership team experienced in the internet industry?
You also want to ask the company for customer testimonials.
See if it has a social media presence on Twitter or Facebook. Credible ORM companies often answer questions and offer advice in public forums.
To ensure you hire the right firm, you want to also ask the following questions:
How many years of experience does the company have?
Online reputation management is undeniably a relatively “young” industry, as the internet itself has only been around since 1983.
Still, ORM companies that have been around longer may be better able to accommodate changes in SEO trends and may have more experience dealing with smear campaigns, internet blackmail, and other problems that younger companies might not have dealt with before and might not be prepared to tackle.
How broad is the company’s focus?
Far too many “reputation management” companies and their tools take a limited view of the internet.
It’s great that you’re able to track your social media engagement or see how a particular search engine is ranking your content. But you often need a broader look at the entire internet to fix your reputation problem.
With the rise in AI, you might also want to know if an ORM company is keeping up with the times to make its reputation management efforts more effective.
Hint: If a company only promises to improve your social media presence in one area of the internet, you should probably keep searching.
What kind of products does the company offer?
Individuals and companies will usually have different needs regarding their online reputation problems.
The same applies to companies of different size. For example, a small firm might have needs that are distinct from the needs of a large company.
And a private citizen without much of a reputation will probably have different reputation problem than a local celebrity looking to get past a personal setback.
As such, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution, and any site trying to sell you one deserves an extra layer of scrutiny.
The best companies will provide unique content strategies as well as personalized assistance, when necessary.
While you are researching ORM firms, make sure to ask how each company’s products and services work. These solutions often involve highly technical terms or complex concepts, which means some answers might be hard to understand. But don’t let that hold you back.
You still need to ask. And if the company can’t explain its answer to you in a way you can understand, then you might want to consider using another ORM company.
What are the company’s products built on?
Companies that have been around for many years will have a history of products their current ones have been built upon. This experience building software and strategies will be invaluable when you need something that falls outside of a “standard” reputation experience.
What level of support does the company provide?
Some firms will only sell you some software or a web login, leaving you on your own once you get into their website or download the software.
A good ORM company will help you figure out what you need to do and even provide you with a dedicated reputation advisor to help you get the best results from its products.
What type of companies should I avoid?
Just like every other type of business, the ORM industry contains “good guys” and “bad guys.”
Less-reputable companies engage in what the industry refers to as “black-hat” tactics like the following:
- Astroturfing reviews: This practice involves creating phony review site accounts and using them to compose positive reviews. Another astroturfing method is to pay people to write good reviews about clients to boost their ratings and balance out any negative posts. Because review sites now have algorithms that filter out these fake reviews, this tactic is not very effective. It’s also illegal in the US and can get you in trouble with the FTC. (Check your local laws to see if it is illegal where you live or do business.)
- Creating fake websites or content: By launching bogus websites and posting false information on them, unscrupulous companies can generate additional search results to help conceal negative ones.
It’s an epidemic, you must be careful, some companies may try to convince you that fake reviews are an easy fix, depending on your business. Don’t buy into this. It’s a huge red flag for consumers.
- Keyword stuffing: With this method, ORM firms insert as many keywords as they can fit into a client website’s metadata to improve the client’s search rankings. This sometimes works for a short while. But in the long term, Google penalizes websites that do this, making your problems even more difficult to solve.
- Link spamming: This technique involves pasting multiple links to a site someone wants to promote in the comments section of an article or blog. However, many sites employ blog software systems that can eliminate or reduce link spam. Further, search engines that discover a link being spammed can reduce the offending website’s visibility or remove it from the search results altogether.
- Invisible text: Some firms try to influence their clients’ search results by placing extra keywords on their clients’ websites. Also called “content cloaking,” this technique hides the words from view by making them the same color as the background of the page. Although this technique was widely used in the past, Google is now much more adept at discovering this shady tactic.
- Using spam bots: To prevent viewers from easily accessing negative content (thus causing it to rank lower in the search results) some less-reputable firms rely on hacking, denial-of-service attacks, and spam bots.
How should I judge the price of ORM services?
You should look for a tiered pricing system that offers low-cost entry to the ORM company’s service.
Remember, most reputable firms will be willing to work with you on pricing. Everyone’s ORM situation is unique, and the cost of solving a problem isn’t always reflected on a rate sheet.
If a quoted price is more than what you’re willing to pay for your reputation management problem, feel free to shop around.
A high price, however, doesn’t always mean a company is greedy; rather, it might be an accurate assessment of how much work it will take to manage your reputation problem.
Don’t forget, if the company is giving you tailored attention, a reputation expert, and modern tools, it’s probably going to be a little more expensive.
Many people underestimate how much time and effort go into a sustained reputation management campaign.
Here’s where educating yourself can pay off: If you determine that the price is fair given the amount of work that will go into your case, then you should consider paying for the service.
Consider ReputationDefender
Now that you know how to choose the best online reputation management services for your money, you should take a look at ReputationDefender.
A leader in online reputation management services and internet privacy services since its founding in 2006, ReputationDefender continues to develop new ways to help its customers protect their good names online.
One advantage ReputationDefender offers is its free online reputation report card. This resource instantly grades your online reputation and gives you details about how others see you online. This provides you a front-row seat on how to start improving your online reputation without wasting time.
After you get your report, you can speak with a reputation management expert about next steps. We are happy to offer you a free, no-strings-attached consultation on your reputation issues and the most effective ways to tackle them.